Just wondering. I know Scots Gaelic is mostly a dead language, now, but I don’t know for how long it’s been so. Or why. Did William Wallace speak English or Gaelic at home? How about James VI and I?
Its a pretty recent decline if you’re going to go as far back as William Wallace. Up to 25% of the population still spoke Scottish as their first language up to 200 years ago though the decline probably began with the Highland Clearences.
Wallace would have probably spoken everything I guess. Wiki says he learned Latin in school but I guess that if he was able to rouse the Scots into battle then he would have had to have been able to speak their language?
Gaelic or Scots ? It’s my impression (though I’m far from an expert) that it’s been a lot longer than that since Gaelic, as such, has been prevelant in the (more highly populated) Lowlands regions
I can’t vouch for the source but from
http://www.savegaelic.org/gaelic/scottish-gaelic-history.php
"Gaelic began to decline in Scotland by the beginning of the 13th century, and with this went a decline in its status as a national language. By the beginning of the 15th century, the highland-lowland line was beginning to emerge.
By the early 16th century, the Gaelic language had acquired the name Erse, meaning Irish, and thereafter it was invariably the collection of Middle English dialects spoken within the Kingdom of the Scots that came to be referred to as Scottis (whence Scots)."
The last part is in reference to the fact that Scots Gaelic was referred to as Scottis in contemporary English up to that point.
It should also be remembered that South-Eastern Scotland was Saxon (part of the kingdom of Bernicia and later Northumbria) until it was conquered by the Scots in the 11th century,.
There is a very real sense in which one can answer, “It never did.” Scots, meaning the Low West Germanic language with admixtures of Celtic and Old French, was the common language of the Lowlands, with a majority of the population, since the later days of the House of MacAlpin. While dialectal Scots of the “Och, I ken ye hae ne’er seen sae bonnie a lassie!” sort (stereotypical exaggeration intentional) is growing rare, the case can be made that Scots converged with English under the influence of its much larger and culturally more domiant sister language, and a Scots identical to “English with a Scottish accent and a few dialectal word variants” continues to be the dominant tongue today.
Anglian, surely?
That’s an interesting point. The Scots themselves called them Sassenachs (still a term of abuse for an Englishman), which is, of course, a version of Saxon. But you’re right, they were Anglian kingdoms, I believe.
I was wondering about this recently. Where the heck did the Old French come from? Did it come in with William the Conqueror, or was there some other conduit?
Also there was a sizeable Brythonic Celtic kingdom in Strathclyde until 10th century as well as sizeable Viking settlements. Not to mention the Picts who little about their language is known.
Yes, with WtC.
But, why? Scotland was entirely politically independent of England from 1314 to 1603. AFAIK, there was never a period when large numbers of English settlers colonized Scotland (as they did Ireland). Why did the Scots give up Gaelic without that pressure?
The ‘English’ were already there in the lowlands in the form of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that were absorbed by Scotland.
It’s worth noting that no-one is quite sure how Gaelic managed to completely replace Pictish as the Picts were more numerous than the Gaels and usually more dominant.
Well, when did English become the most widely spoken language in England?
The spread of English happened before the unification of the Kingdom of England. Angles and Saxons and Danes were wandering all over, and they didn’t just settle in what is now England.
The mistake here, I think, is assuming that Scots learned English from people in the nation of England. When the Angles and Saxons were colonizing Britain, the nations “England” and “Scotland” did not exist. The Angles and Saxons carved out a number of kingdoms: Bernicia, Deira, Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Sussex, Kent, and a few others. Most of those are in what is now England. The Celtic territories were gradually taken over. Elmet (Elfed) and Reget (Rheged) were absorbed early; Cumbria and Strathclyde later; Cornwall was taken into “England” pretty early but retained a separate identity and, in the west, a separate language for quite a while.
What is now Scotland, on the other hand, is a more complex story. The earliest inhabitants, insofar as we can tell, were Brythonic Celts and probably some non-Indo-European folks. These Celts can be loosely divided into Welsh (Strathclyde), Cumbric (Strathclyde, if you don’t think they were Welsh), and Pictish. We know quite a bit about Pictish (including that there were some in Ireland), though it is certainly true that the picture is less clear than for southern Britain. The Welsh were driven out; the Cumbrians remained in SW Scotland / NW England (or, if you prefer, the Britons who left went to Wales and assimilated with the Celts there; the Britons who remained are called Cumbrians).
Meanwhile, different groups were invading Scotland. The Irish Dál Riata invaded, introducing what would become Gaelic to the island of Britain. So, fact the first: GAELIC IS NOT THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF SCOTLAND, even in historical times. It seems to have displaced Pictish. The Angles invaded from the south, taking over from the Welsh (or perhaps Cumbrians) in the Southeast. Fact the second: ENGLISH HAS BEEN SPOKEN IN WHAT IS NOW SCOTLAND NEARLY AS LONG AS GAELIC HAS, albeit in a different region. The Vikings also invaded, mostly in the far north, and their language evolved into Norn, which died out in rather recent times and has influenced both English and Gaelic considerably. Gaelic preaspiration is believed to be a Norse feature.
The modern decline of Gaelic at the tongues of the English continues a trend that started long ago, as described above.
I noticed when I was in Scotland that Scots Gaelic doesn’t hold nearly as much a presence there as in Ireland, even outside the Gaeltachtaí (Irish-speaking regions, predominantly in the West of Ireland). In Dublin where you won’t hear much Irish spoken, street signs, some shop signs and other things are in Irish. When I visited Glasgow the only Gaelic I saw was Irish Gaelic on a sign for an Irish pub. No Scots person I met had any knowledge whatsoever of Scots Gaelic. In Ireland we study Irish as a compulsory subject in school so most people can string together a sentence or two (we should be better at it but that’s another subject entirely).
Welsh, the only knowledge of which I have through the channel S4C that we get on digital tv seems to be more alive and vibrant than either Scots Gaelic or Irish Gaelic. This is only from watching that channel so maybe it gives me the wrong impression.
Interestingly enough, both Irish (Gaelic) and Ulster-Scots (the Northern Irish variant of lowlands Scots) have had somewhat of a renaissance in Northern Ireland.
Relevant links:
http://www.ulsterscotsagency.com/
http://www.dcalni.gov.uk/index/languages/irish_language_act.htm
The status of the modern Celtic languages varies a lot depending on how you measure it. Breton is assumed to have the most native speakers, and so in that sense is the healthiest, but they also operate with the least government support (and some outright government antagonism), their native speakers have the highest mean age (practically geriatric), and few children are learning it.
Irish Gaelic can possibly claim the greatest number of people with some knowledge of the language (as a first or second language), and it has the highest level of official support within the Republic of Ireland, and some support from the U.K. in Northern Ireland as well. Despite 80+ years of independence, though, Irish does not seem to be gaining ground against English.
Welsh is generally considered to be doing the best in terms of future survival: children are learning it and using it, the numbers of first-language speakers are actually going up (as per the most recent census), and people use it in their everyday life in the home and at work, even in majority English-speaking areas. Still, there are whole areas of life that are conducted in English, and even S4C (the Welsh TV station) runs most of its commercials in English.
Scottish Gaelic, of the four living Celtic languages [please, Manx and Cornish speakers, hold your fire], is generally considered to be doing the worst. It has its strongholds in the Hebrides, but as a percentage of the Scottish population it is vanishingly low (something like 3% of the total population) and it has had less support from Edinburgh. On the other hand, if you want to learn a Celtic language, Scottish Gaelic has [in my experience, having studied them all] the best dictionaries and other reference material, so there is obviously some effort going into keeping it alive. But of the four it’s the most likely to go extinct. Not this century, probably, as children do still learn it in the home and in some cases at school, but the trends are not good.
The table halfway down this page says there were less than 25% Gaelic speakers (who couldn’t also speak English) in 1775. Just before the table he says
But doesn’t say whether that was over 50% of the population or not.
ISTR that Glasgow has several Gealic primary schools; I know Edinburgh has at least one (about 1/2 mile away!)
As has been stated by other posts, Gaelic was never the native language of all of Scotland. Lowland speakers of Scots never “gave up” Gaelic.
Distinguish between “Scots” the ethnic group and “Scots” the nationality. Most of Scotland was united as a single nation (albeit with occasional rebellions) from the reign of Kenneth MacAlpin until that of Queen Anne.
Of this group, the ethnic Scots from Ulster who colonized Dalriada were one small component. Only they (and apparently the Hebrideans) spoke Gaelic, which split around the 16th Century into Irish Gaelic and Scots Gaelic.